The Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College, Paterson, NJ is presenting a literary festival and conference "
Celebrating the Poetic Legacy of Whitman, Williams and Ginsberg."
On Saturday, June 3, 2017, this event will offer a series of scholarly and creative panels that explore the legacy of Whitman, Williams, and Ginsberg or other American poets, who write in the same poetic tradition.
The day will also feature readings in the Distinguished Poets Series by Patricia Smith and Li-Young Lee.
Li-Young Lee was born in Jakarta, Indonesia, to Chinese parents. When he was two, the Lee family fled the country to escape anti-Chinese sentiment and after a five-year trek through Hong Kong, Macau, and Japan, they settled in the United States in 1964.
Lee attended the Universities of Pittsburgh and Arizona, and the State University of New York at Brockport. He has taught at several universities, including Northwestern and the University of Iowa.
He is the author of
The Winged Seed: A Remembrance, Behind My Eyes, Book of My Nights , which won the 2002 William Carlos Williams Award,
The City in Which I Love You and
Rose, which won the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Poetry Award. Lee lives in Chicago, Illinois, with his wife, Donna, and their two sons.
Patricia Smith is the author of five volumes of poetry, including
Blood Dazzler, a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award,
Teahouse of the Almighty, a National Poetry Series selection, and
Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah.
A professor for the City University of New York and a Cave Canem faculty member, she lives in New Jersey with her husband, Edgar Award–winning novelist Bruce DeSilva, her granddaughter Mikaila, and two humongous dogs, Brady and Rondo.
